What is it about?
How does knowledge about sustainable NMT get created? How are sustainable NMT innovations diffused? How can technological and societal transitions to more sustainable realities be nurtured and augmented? This article utilizes a longitudinal and integrated knowledge creation and diffusion model with a Participatory Planning Process to analyze the adoption of measures aimed at reducing the negative consequences of too much automobility and encouraging higher levels of walking, cycling, and mass transportation. The key findings and lessons learned promote scenarios of managed degrowth and sustainable urban transitions.
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Why is it important?
This article fills a gap in the history of sustainable transportation planning in the Western hemisphere by highlighting transitions facilitated by the author and many other scholars, activists, and policy-makers. It argues that NMT resources are now much more abundant than three decades ago. However, relatively similar challenges seem to still exist, with high levels of car dependency, especially in the United States, as well as in many countries in the Global North, including the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) and Portugal.
Perspectives
These are the key aspects of this study: personal—knowledge creation based on trust relationships; academic—individual career progression, lasting legacies; institutional public realm—national-, state-, metropolitan-, and municipal-level accomplishments; volunteering NGO—think tank sectorial, transportation activism, and ecology-based movements; and private—consulting opportunities.
Dr. Carlos J. L. Balsas, AICP
Ulster University Belfast
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Innovations in Non-Motorized Transportation (NMT) Knowledge Creation and Diffusion, World, October 2025, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/world6040136.
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